Scripture: Proverbs 16: 32; Esther 3: 1-6
Sermon: The Folly of Anger; The Wisdom of Self-Control
Topics: anger, self-control, guns, violence,
Preached: October 11, 2015
Rev. Mike Abma
Preamble
This is the first of a series of sermons this fall the Bryant and I will be preaching.
Each of these sermons will take a Proverb and set it alongside an Old Testament narrative or story.
The book of Proverbs says a lot about anger.
Proverbs mentions anger well over a dozen times,
never in a positive sense.
Anger is always seen as foolish
Overlooking an offense, controlling one’s temper, is seen as wise.
So our Proverb for this morning, found on the bulletin cover,
Is a good summary of what the book of Proverbs says:
Proverbs 16: 32
“One who is slow to anger is better than the mighty,
and one whose temper is controlled than one who captures a city.”
That is our Proverb.
Our Old Testament narrative, or story, comes from the book of Esther.
The book of Esther has a lot of anger in it.
From the get-go, in chapter 1,
The Persian King, Ahasuerus — (which is kind of a tongue-twister,
so I will call him by his other name Xerxes)
This Persian King, Xerxes comes off looking like a joke.
When he gets plastered at a party
and wants to show-off his wife
to his equally inebriated friends.
his wife, Vashti, wisely says, No.
and Xerxes begins to pout and rage like a child.
He ends up fuming: “If she will not see me,
I will never again see her.”
Any married couple see this as a bright thing to do?
Then there is Esther chapter 2, which ends with 2 imperial guards angry at the king. So angry, they plan to assassinate him.
Mordecai, Esther’s cousin, discovers the plot, and saves the king’s life.
Now we get to our passage, in Esther chapter 3,
which ends up being the most pathetic case of anger.
3After these things King Ahasuerus promoted Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite (Amalekite), and advanced him and set his seat above all the officials who were with him. 2And all the king’s servants who were at the king’s gate bowed down and did obeisance to Haman; for the king had so commanded concerning him. But Mordecai did not bow down or do obeisance. 3Then the king’s servants who were at the king’s gate said to Mordecai,
‘Why do you disobey the king’s command?’
4When they spoke to him day after day and he would not listen to them, they told Haman, in order to see whether Mordecai’s words would avail (his behavior would be tolerated); for he had told them that he was a Jew.
5When Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down or do obeisance to him, Haman was infuriated (filled with rage). 6But he thought it beneath him to lay hands on Mordecai alone. So, having been told who Mordecai’s people were, Haman plotted to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION — THE PROBLEM WITH MORDECAI
Why doesn’t Mordecai bow to Haman?
We are not told.
It could be out of a desire not to compromise his Jewish faith.
It could be out of an old tribal animosity between the Jews and the Amalekites —
Mordecai, the Jew, Haman, the Amalekite (Agagite).
It could be personal — that Mordecai simply did not like Haman.
Whatever the reason, we know the result.
Haman notices, and he is infuriated — filled with rage.
Why is he so angry?
This is our introduction to this character Haman.
If we were to read the whole book, it would become pretty clear that Haman is obsessed with his own honor and his own dignity.
He dreams of being honored by the king.
He demands being honored by everyone else.
He takes Mordecai’s refusal to bow
as a personal offense
a personal insult
a personal attack on his honor.
What makes this story particularly wild and crazy
is that this seemingly small offense (not bowing)
puts into motion a massive plot to kill all the Jews
in the whole Persian Empire –that is everything from India to Ethiopia.
THE PROBLEM WITH US
The problem is, we have heard this kind of story before:
someone has a fairly high opinion of themselves;
others do not share that high opinion;
that person becomes angry, infuriated against all those
who do not show him enough respect or regard;
that person writes angry manifestos online;
that person enters a public space with multiple weapons, and starts shooting.
This is the profile written in the New York Times of the mass shooter phenomenon in America today.
From a distance, this kind of anger always looks crazy.
But to the person caught up in the rage, in makes sense.
Hundreds and thousands of people are in prison today because of uncontrolled anger. Last month, the Atlantic magazine carried a story about New Orleans.
The story began by telling of a 9 year old boy, James Darby, who wrote the President a letter in 1994 asking the President to please help stop all the killing in that city.
Ten days later, while families were having a picnic in a park, a dispute suddenly erupted. A 16 year old girl got hit in the eye.
That 16 year old girl went home to her 19 year old brother.
The 19 year old brother thought that he had to defend the honor of his wounded sister.
So he went to the park with a gun.
He shot at the people he thought hit his sister.
The only person he hit and killed was the 9 year old boy who wrote the President – James Darby.
Anger is not simply the problem of mass shooters,
or the problem of the thousands of criminals behind bars for violent crimes.
Anger is a problem for all of us.
A few years ago, David Buss, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, asked his students if they had ever thought of killing someone.
If so, he invited them to write an essay about that.
91% of his male students wrote essays.
84% of his female students wrote essays.
That is quite a few essays.
What astounded Professor Buss was the vivid detail of these essays,
and that these essays sometimes even included steps the students had already taken to vent their anger.
A few years ago, the New York Times invited anyone 70 years old or older to summarize their life story in a page or two. In all the life stories submitted by doctors, lawyers, accountants, people who had lived “successful lives,” the regret most frequently mentioned was anger. These life stories had a sad refrain: “I was angry too quickly, too often, for too long.”
II. THE SOLUTION — PART ONE CONTAINMENT
So what can we do?
The Desert Father Poeman observed that
Just as we cannot prevent air from coming into our lungs
We cannot prevent angry and evil thoughts from coming into our minds.
So what do we do when these angry and evil thoughts come?
The first step of self-control is to contain one’s anger.
This is what the former President Dwight Eisenhower learned to do.
Dwight, or Ike, realized from a young age that he had a temper.
He also realized his temper got him into all kinds of trouble.
So he learned to contain his anger publicly.
He learned to smile on the outside,
while fuming on the inside.
He learned to write polite things for the public,
but vent in his private diaries
where he kept a list of all the people who offended him.
One of those people was General Douglas MacArthur,
someone Eisenhower worked under for 8 years.
After 8 years, Eisenhower was so sick of pretending to admire MacArthur,
that he wrote in his diary
that he was tired of keeping MacArthur from making a fool of himself;
he was tired of MacArthur acting like a king and treating everyone as a
slave;
and that MacArthur was worse than a fool – he was a baby!
SOLUTION PART TWO — CONTROL
Containing our anger is simply part-one of practicing self-control.
But it is not enough.
It is like swallowing poison,
and expecting the other person to die.
What we need to do is de-toxify ourselves
of the anger that often simmers and boils in us.
So how do we begin to do that?
We can begin by trying to diagnose our anger
and by trying to figure out where it is coming from.
We have to know what is causing us to be so angry.
Usually anger comes when something we hold dear is threatened.
Take Haman, for example.
What did he hold dear?
His dignity, his honor, his inflated self — that is what he held dear.
Diagnosing our anger can actually be a very spiritual exercise.
Anger often exposes the idols in our life.
What makes us angry?
When we have lost face
When we have lost money
When the kids mess up the car
When our employer threats to mess with our benefits.
Our anger could be pointing us in the direction of our idols.
SOLUTION PART THREE CURE
Self-control isn’t simply about containing anger,
or even diagnosing anger.
It is also about learning to move in a healthier direction.
Remember that 19 year old teenager,
who went to that park in New Orleans
and shot into a crowd, killing that 9 year old boy.
Well his name is Joseph Norfleet and he has spent the last 21 years in the Angola prison in Louisiana.
Joseph is now a soft-spoken 40 year old.
When the Atlantic journalist asked why he shot into the crowd that day,
He answered, “Anger is why I did it.
And anger blinds you.
I thought what I did I needed to do to be a man.
Now I know that being a man is doing the one thing you do not really want to do.”
Think about that answer a moment:
Now I know that being a man is doing
the one thing you really do not want to do.
Here is something you should know about the Angola prison.
It is a prison filled with people serving life-sentences.
But it is also a prison that has a full-fledged Seminary inside of it.
It is a prison where many of the inmates have trained to be pastors and chaplains.
Even Calvin Seminary visits this prison to see how the inmates are being
theologically educated.
When someone in Angola prison says
being a man is doing the one thing you really do not want to do,
this means
that anger pushes us to want hit back,
yet the one thing we do not want to do,
but need to do, is absorb an offense.
This means that anger wants revenge
yet the one thing we do not want to do,
but need to do, is to forgive.
This means that anger wants to think only bad thoughts
of the people who anger and annoy us
yet the one thing we do not want to do,
but need to do, is to pray for those people.
To be a man or woman of God when we are angry
means doing all the things we really do not want to do.
JESUS — THE VICTIM OF ANGER
When you think about it, anger is what got Jesus killed.
The religious authorities were furious
At this upstart Rabbi from Nazareth
Who was attracting more and more of a crowd
And who seemed to be taking away more and more of their dignity.
So in their anger
They arrested Jesus
Tried Jesus
And had him sentenced to death.
We know that Jesus had the power to wipe them out.
with the blink of an eye
he could have summoned legions of angels.
But he does not do that.
Instead he absorbs their evil.
He takes in their anger.
And then he returns to them
mercy, forgiveness, love.
He says to the very people killing him
“Father, forgive them
For they do not know what they are doing.”
CONCLUSION
When Jonathan Edwards,
The Puritan preacher
Writes about anger,
He uses the image of a river.
He writes that when a person’s spirit is shallow,
It is like a shallow stream,
Where any rock, any ridge, any obstruction at all
Causes the water to churn into dangerous rapids.
But when a person’s spirit is deep,
It is like a deep river
Where, no matter how many rocks and ridges and obstructions underneath,
The river remains calm.
People of God
enter into the waters of Christ’s grace, and love, and peace;
cool down,
calm down,
and deepen your capacity
to love, to forgive, to pray.
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